It is my great pleasure to present my fifth President’s Overview. Joining the then Hong Kong Institute of Education as it was completing the decade-long university title journey, I was privileged to work with all the University stakeholders in achieving this historic milestone as well as making advances on various fronts in line with our core mission of teacher education. This year, we achieved yet another milestone. For the first time, the University entered the top 10 in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings in Education. My heartfelt gratitude goes to our Council members, staff, students, alumni, donors, partners and supporters for their unfailing support. Nothing is more gratifying to me as President than witnessing our graduating students receiving their hard-earned academic awards and preparing with confidence to contribute to their profession and the community at large.
During the 2017/18 academic year, the University continued to make strides in learning and teaching, research, and knowledge transfer. Thanks to the concerted efforts of all faculty members, I am pleased to report that the University attained full self-accrediting status in April 2018 for all of its academic programmes. This is strong testimony to our entrenched quality assurance culture. We will remain committed to reviewing and revamping our programme offerings in line with our Education-plus approach. In response to the changing education landscape and emerging needs of the community, we made a major decision to implement a new curriculum structure for Bachelor of Education students from 2019/20 academic year, following a series of holistic reviews, international benchmarking and thorough deliberation. This will be implemented alongside a new set of Graduate Attributes, applicable to both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Drawing on our cross-disciplinary expertise, the University has taken the lead in promoting e-learning in support of pedagogical and educational innovation. Our e-portfolio, which was commended by the University Grants Committee (UGC)’s Quality Assurance Council as a distinctive feature of the University’s undergraduate education, will become part of the new full-time undergraduate common curriculum commencing the 2019/20 academic year. I was particularly delighted to see the application and adaptation of our e-portfolio as a virtual learning platform for a selected cohort of undergraduate students from our University and the Medical Faculty of The University of Hong Kong. The new e-platform will benefit undergraduate students from both universities, helping them broaden their learning experiences and reflect upon their professional identities as future teachers or doctors.
During the year, we also worked on a UGC-funded project to apply virtual reality in the development of teaching materials for geography, liberal studies and general studies. We provided coding education for undergraduate and postgraduate students and we incorporated STEM education and e-learning into the new professional development programmes for school leaders and serving teachers.
On the research front, our performance in the General Research Fund (GRF) and Early Career Scheme (ECS) during the year attested to our robust research culture and capacity. About a quarter of our submissions were successful, receiving HK$21.46 million in funding, which represented a 12 per cent increase in newly approved projects over the previous year and a 17 per cent rise in overall funding. Our University was again ranked first in the subject discipline of Education, both in terms of the number of projects awarded and the total funding amount. Credit should go to our scholars, who are currently engaged in 175 projects supported by over HK$105 million in grants from the Research Grants Council and other funding bodies. Based on our strengthening research output, I am confident the State Key Laboratory in Marine Pollution, which opened on campus in June 2018, will advance our research capacity in our designated strategic area in environmental studies.
Equally encouraging was the continued growth of our postgraduate population, alongside the rising number of prestigious Hong Kong PhD Fellowship recipients and allocated UGC-funded research postgraduate places. The percentage of overseas research postgraduate students also rose substantially, from four per cent in 2015/16 to 30 per cent in 2017/18. Meanwhile, our doctoral students benefited from the introduction of dual doctoral degree programmes in partnership with reputable universities in France, Germany and Japan.
During the year, the University led various knowledge transfer projects to drive innovative educational approaches for the local school sector, thanks to generous support from our donors and project partners. Among the projects was an animated series chronicling the lives of 10 legendary individuals from more than two millennia of Chinese history. Lively animated videos and supporting teaching materials arouse primary students’ interest in China’s rich history and culture, helping them learn not only historical facts, but also the positive values upheld by these extraordinary historical characters.
To promote coding education for the younger generation, the University trained more than 100 teachers on coding for the benefit of over 16,500 upper primary students in 32 pilot schools. The relevant curricular materials, co-developed by the University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be shared with more primary schools. For schools whose students have special learning needs, our team helped digitise their school-based learning materials and made them available on a customised e-learning platform. Other knowledge transfer projects during the year covered Chinese learning and teaching for non-Chinese speakers, the revitalisation of Cantonese opera, life education, and STEM education, among others. In generating and advocating new ideas for the ongoing development of education, Council Chairman Professor Frederick Ma and I initiated a high-level platform called Education Salon to engage policymakers, lawmakers, school leaders and education professionals in the exchange of views on issues pertaining to education.
Beyond Hong Kong, the University was active in reaching out to Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries through knowledge transfer in teacher education. I am pleased that after being appointed by the World Bank through a global selection process, the University played a key role in a nationwide consultancy project in Vietnam, advising major teacher training universities there on capacity building and teacher professional development. Our ties were further strengthened through the signing of a memorandum of understanding with six of these universities in May 2018. The scope of our World Bank consultancy expanded in June to cover Vietnam’s higher education sector and its flagship comprehensive universities.
Over the past five years, the University community has worked with concerted effort to achieve many milestones, big and small, step by step amid challenges and trying times. With society becoming increasingly polarised, it is all the more important for all of us in this liberal academic community to continue upholding our core values, including diversity, rationality and mutual respect, in our pursuit, creation and dissemination of knowledge.
Professor Stephen Y. L. Cheung, BBS, JP
Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques
President